The Future of Religion and Conflict

What have we learned about religion and conflict over the last 20 years, and what does the future hold? As the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict begins its 20th anniversary year, John Carlson reflects on these questions. Using two important timestamps—September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021—he considers how the assumptions and conclusions that emerged in relation to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have been replicated—yet also upended—by the 1/6 attack upon the U.S. Capitol.

Both events raise deep and significant questions about the presumed dangers of religion and its threat to democracy, in the United States and beyond it. Charting several features of the topography of religion and conflict, Carlson assesses whether our conceptual frameworks, civic vocabularies, and scholarly tools are adequate to the challenges we now face. In anticipation of another momentous event—the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963—Carlson offers a proposal for moving some of the tortured legacies too often associated with the landscape known as “religion and conflict.”